The Savior

Are Gottfried Keller and his violin instruments of torture or of hope? Can hope be twisted and distorted for evil purposes or is that impossible? Can it be true that hope can only produce the extraordinary even if after death or even beyond human awareness? Conversely perhaps hope can weaken our instincts or better judgment - in our gut we sense a different outcome (a negative one) but we press on without taking action on our better judgment. There are so many gut wrenching paradoxes in this book that it left me searching for answers. I am moved by this book and I am horrified at the same time; Horrified at the depictions of the camps and the notion that human beings are capable of this grotesque and repugnant behavior. Recommended.

In the closing days of World War II, somewhere in Germany, along the rapidly receding Eastern Front, a young brilliant German violinist is torn between his passion for creating great music from the scores of great German and other classical composers, from J. S. Bach to P. Hindemith, and bittersweet memories of two friends from a prominent music school, both extremely talented classical musicians who fled Nazi Germany nearly a decade earlier due to their Jewish heritage. He finds himself unexpectedly, in the service of the SS, after spending the war performing in hospital wards for injured Wehrmacht soldiers. Violinist Gottfried Keller endures four living days in "Hell", a Nazi death camp that, at first, seems to be a mere labor camp, despite its ominous signs and portents, that Keller recognizes almost immediately upon his arrival; such as its sickly, cadaverous, starving inmates and a room filled with shoes in a large, otherwise vacant, warehouse room that he glimpses by accident. The camp's charming and intellectually sophisticated, but sadistic, Kommandant orders him to conduct a macabre experiment: determining whether thirty inmates, who have almost been starved to death, can be brought "back to life" just by hearing Keller's brilliant, rhapsodic playing over the span of these four days. For a few fleeting moments, he earns the trust, and "friendship" of Grete, one of these inmates, and Rudi, a SS guard who befriends Keller through his own keen interest in and devotion to J. S. Bach's music. But these come at a psychologically bitter price, since Keller realizes that he is almost living vicariously through his "friendship" with Grete, a bitter semblance of his love affair with Marietta, the woman whose marriage proposal he had to reject, fearful of being ostracized by both the Nazi regime and fellow local citizens for being a "Jew-lover". He also recoils in horror after hearing the young SS guard's admission of having committed heinous crimes against humanity, while still expressing a sincere, heart-felt admiration for Bach's great choral works. But, in the end, he hears the guard, Rudi, wonder aloud whether Germany's great cultural heritage can withstand its recent plunge into barbarism, and its many crimes against humanity committed by Rudi and others of his ilk. Emerson String Quartet violinist Eugene Drucker has admirably drawn upon his father's own heroic experiences in confronting - and then successfully fleeing from - the then relatively new Nazi regime for religious and political sanctuary in the United States. From these experiences which are compelling in their right, Drucker has made a most auspicious literary debut in fiction, using Keller's emotional and intellectual struggles with his personal demons as a fictional metaphor to look anew at Germany's cultural heritage, in the light of the Holocaust, wondering whether that heritage deserved its survival and transmission to later generations. It is indeed truly a most compellin

A compelling and facinating read. Carefully crafted to take you into the mind of the main character. I was hooked from the first chapter. The author has found a means to explore a tale of art and morality set in Germany late in the Second World War, that is both convincing and frightening. It is a book that leaves a lasting impression. I highly recommend it.

This a compelling story that is lyrically written and emotionally powerful. Eugene Drucker explores the fascinating theme of a man caught in the middle of the horrors of the Third Reich. The concept of the relationship of a performer and his audience gets pushed to an almost surreal extreme. The descriptions of music are extraordinary: BRAVO!!

A lyrical, sad, moving and beautifully written novel. Each sentence has its own rhythm. I was completely engaged and read it in one sitting.